Job
by nathan-p
Summary: Muraki/OC sort-of-fluff. Honestly? I swore I'd write a oneshot about the OC for his birthday, so I did. This is it. Involves showers, towels, and smokestacks. In a non-filthy way. I think.


It's exactly the kind of hotel where, if you let the water warm up for too long while you get undressed, someone's going to come hammer on our door and ask you to get in the shower already. Of course, that doesn't exactly happen. It's more like... well, something else happens.

You're leaning over to reach the soap when you hear what sounds like a high, ephemeral singing. They should have sent a poet, but that's more or less what you hear.

You stand, transfixed, with soap in hand, for a moment; you almost consider leaping from the shower and dragging the closest person to hand in, saying "Do you hear that?"

But you know that, no matter how tempting it sounds, it is not socially acceptable behavior, and so you should not do it. It's kind of hard, living by society's rules now, after having flouted them for so long.

You are thinking about last night. It was a different hotel, but you were also in the shower, also listening to the sound of the water, also thinking about a knock that might come on the door.

He didn't knock; slid the door open and bounded in, fully clothed.

"Nathan!" he said, breathlessly. "You've got to see this."

You hid behind the shower curtain, as well as you could.

"I'm _naked_, Kazutaka. Or did you not notice?"

"Oh, I noticed," he said brightly -- which is comparatively rare for him. "I don't care if you wear a _towel_; you have to see this."

"Well, let me get dressed," you said dubiously.

"Oh... all right," he said, and stepped outside.

You grabbed a towel from the rack and wrapped it around yourself; you reminded yourself of the costumes in that one really long movie about the Bible.

You stepped out of the bathroom, said, "What is it?"

He was sitting on the bed, and he leapt up to meet you. "Come _on_," he said impatiently, and took you by the hand, led you over to the window and held open the blinds. "See?"

"What? What am I looking at?" you asked. "Can I go get my glasses?"

"Oh, just borrow mine," he said absently, and slipped them off with a flick of the wrist, then handed them to you. You put them on and squinted through the glass.

"Unless you mean the highway--" you began to say.

"No," he said, starting to get impatient. He pressed a hand against the glass, pointed to what looks like a factory smokestack not too far across the highway. "There."

"So what am I looking at?" It was cold next to the window; you could hear the shower still running in the bathroom.

"Do you see where the steam comes out of the smokestack?" he said. "Right there."

You looked, and all you could see was a plume of white smoke jetting from the smokestack. "Yeah. I'm going back in the shower now."

"_No_," he said. "_Look_. Between the cloud and the smokestack."

All you saw was a space of empty air.

"Now do you see?" he said. "Above, it's just mist; water carried by the air. _Right there_, it's just water vapor. Invisible. Burning hot. Steam."

He kept talking, but you'd stopped hearing, because he had put his arms around you, and you could _feel_ him breathing, listen to his heartbeat. It was strangely calming -- well, not strangely at all. It was like being a child again, in your mother's arms.

He was murmuring something about Japan, softly. You didn't want to interrupt him, but he interrupted himself for you:

"Oh," he said suddenly. "You should get back in the shower."

By now you were comfortable; in his arms, looking out the window across the highway. "Why?"

He laughed. "You're dripping all over me."

"Oh. All right," you said, and walked back to the bathroom. Before you shut the door, you turned to look at him; silhouetted against the window, one hand holding back the blinds. Like a figure out of some painting; a Van Gogh, perhaps.

"Kazutaka?" you said tentatively.

He half-turned toward you.

"Thank you."

He nodded, then turned back, looking out the window.

You stepped back into the bathroom, closed the sliding door, unwrapped the towel, stepped back into the shower. The bathroom was swimming in steam.

Today, you come back to yourself just as Harry starts hammering on the door. "Man, are you done yet?" he says, half-humorous.

He has refused to share the hotel room with you and Kazutaka; has refused to share any of the hotel rooms so far. He says that he doesn't think he can sleep in an actual bed anymore; it would seem too comfortable. You know that's not true. (It _is_ true, however, that the other won't because he is never comfortable in an unguarded room.)

You laugh. It's kind of... funny, almost. If you wanted to, you could expose Harry's dirty secrets. Tear him apart. Tell him why he feels the way he does, why he does the things he does... why he won't even share a room with you.

If you really wanted, you could hold him in the palm of your hand. Control him, utterly.

But that's not your job. You have never been the controlling, vicious one.

That's Kazutaka's job.

* * *

Note: Whacked this one out in two nights, after remembering that I'd sworn to do a Nathan oneshot for his birthday. (Which is today, by the way.) I'll figure out if there's a sequel or not. Goddamn these guys for deciding they were going to be my favorite thing to write. I'm displeased.

If you're one of the minority who's got me on an alert of some kind, I swear to God I'm working on my Faega story (different fandom, by the way). Very slowly working on it.

I appreciate reviews. A lot. I blush when I get them.

This is a good thing.


End file.
